Raped a child
disgusting
shareIt's fairly nauseating, but not because of the sex itself. Had Bennett aged a few more months it would have been completely legal, there's nothing magical about Bennett's emotional or physical development that would have made him a more suitable paramour for Argento had he been a couple of months older.
The real crime here is the emotional manipulation she subjected him to by forcing herself on him. I don't think Bennett really understood what was happening, even if he found the sex itself enjoyable. He was more or less forced to go through the motions of engaging in intimate emotional gratification of a woman who was likely trying to satisfy some neurotic need for emotional validation, not a specific sexual impulse.
Older women victimize young men because they're easily coerced into providing emotional validation and engagement for them that the women won't get with men in their age peer group. A man of Argento's age would have responded "you're a great lay, I gotta run" and not given her the emotional intimacy she was looking for. Bennett likely responded to Argento as an authority figure and with some instinct that you're supposed to treat women with respect, especially if they have sex with you, and was forced to engage in a level of emotional affection he didn't really feel for her, or if he did was entirely the result of an earlier, more parent-child like relationship.
Had Argento engaged with a man her own age for this kind of casual sex, she would have had to have been much more guarded and aloof to escape feeling used or degraded somehow. It wouldn't have provided her with much, if any, emotional fulfillment.
All that being said, my guess is Argento probably has had a pretty warped life. The daughter of a film director, raised in that kind of environment? Acting at an early age, explicit nude scenes in her early 20s, whatever relationship she had with Weinstein? It's likely she really has no good handle on her own sexuality or that of others.
From her memoir...
About her mother: "I remember her on the phone with a great director, and my sister Anna running after me screaming throughout the apartment to put lemon in my eyes. She had gotten it into her head that lemon was good for your eyesight. My mother, once the phone call was over, took me to task. She pulled down her tights, which she always wore without panties, and she yelled at me: "Lemon is good for your eyesight and it tightens your pussy!" And rubbing it on her crotch before throwing it in the trash. The incident was closed."
Another anecdote: "I escaped in my own way from the reality that surrounded me. For example, I always masturbated and I am convinced that it saved me. My mother made me feel guilty, she was constantly trying to catch me doing my "dirty things", as she said. I always wondered why such a free woman was so obsessed with my little girl urges. It was a way for me to escape, to repair my soul from all the injustices I was a victim of, to reclaim the immeasurable value of my intimacy. In a way, to grant myself the caresses that no one gave me. A little older, I bought myself a bottle in secret. The pacifier comforted me. One day, I was maybe 8 years old, I asked my mother if I could suckle her breast. It was evening, she was sitting on the edge of the bed, and she agreed, no doubt she understood that I needed it. I remember her white shirt unbuttoned, her chest barely touched. One of the happiest memories of my childhood."